Anthro Midterm #2
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52 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Culture (Cronk) | socially transmitted information (recipe); symbolically transmitted information stored in people's heads |
| Information | anything people can store in their memories: information, misinformation, disinformation, and value judgments |
| Meme | small unit of culture analogous to a gene |
| Human nature | evolved biological heritage shared by all human beings (best described as things easily learned and hard to unlearn; examples: kin altruism, incest avoidance, speech) |
| Universals | religion, status differences, lying, gossip, rituals, art, drama, music, dance, poetry, kinship |
| Culture and behavior gap | Mukogodo cultural preference for sons, but behavioral preference for daughters; culture is not a blueprint for behavior; rather a tool for influencing behavior of others |
| Science | a type of social discourse and accumulated knowledge that has (a) theory, (b) testability, falsifiability, (c) consistency and (d) connection with other sciences |
| Emotions | commitments and their visible signs are hard-to-fake signals of commitment; can't fake convincingly Can generally read emotional state of other effectively |
| Morality | an emotionally charged definition of some behaviors as good, to be imitated, and deserving of reward, others as bad, not to be imitated, and deserving of punishment |
| Encephalization | evolutionary trend toward a large brain to body ratio; slope is well above 45 degrees-strong evidence for natural selection (more and more resources placed with brain) |
| Brain is a costly organ | Uses 20% of energy taken in; requires high quality diet—related to shift from vegetarian to mixed meat/vegetarian diet in human evolution |
| Neocortical ratio | ratio of the neocortex to the rest of the brain; better predictor of social group size than brain/body |
| How culture fits into an evolutionary model | 1. Memes 2. Guide to adaptive behavior 3. Negotiation and manipulation |
| Guide to adaptive behavior | cultural and reproductive success; hard to find outside of modern, urban industrial societies |
| Negotiation and manipulation | memes have low copying fidelity; people intentionally modify them with strategic goals in mind |
| Modular | human nature is... |
| Heterogeneous | culture is... |
| To cope with manipulators | be smart, moral, and need to make effective use of language |
| Cronk thumbs down | Extreme cultural relativism; E.O. Wilson's argument: naturalistic fallacy is not a fallacy; moral absolutism (universal morals) |
| Middle ground | Between absolutism and extreme relativism 1. cultures not coherent wholes; incoherent bundles of ideas that are always being contested and renegotiated 2. Culture traits hav eno rights 3. Connect study of human behavior to rest of science 4. clean up own society first |
| Novel environments | sperm banks, diets (too much fat), jumping armadillos, EEA |
| EEA | environment of evolutionary adaptedness |
| Integrate evolution into social sciences | 1. Kin altruism/nepotism 2. mating preferences 3. definition of utility in economics |
| Mating preferences | David Buss; women prefer resources/status/ambition; men prefer health and youth |
| Yanomamo villages | 40-300; model size=100; several hours to several days walk apart |
| Yanomamo people | Foot people not river people |
| Intervillage warfare endemic | slash and burn horticulture supplies 80% of food, rest hunting and gathering |
| Yanomamo garden | anyone who wants one can clear land and have one; abandon when overgrown with thorny weeks; cause short moves |
| Yanomamo diet | plenty of protein, many plantains, manioc, sweet potatoes, papaya, avocados, hot peppers, tobacco, cotton, arrow cane |
| Macro movements | for political or military reasons; fleeing enemies |
| Yanomamo warfare | not an adaptation to assure adequate protein in diet; conflicts among men over potential wives and illicit liaisons and revenge |
| Chagnon and James Neel | accused of mass murder, fomenting warfare, killing for hire against humanity; none of the allegations are true like other stories that serve political purpose, stories are continued and believed by some; compare the birthers and the deathers |
| Hatfields and McCoys | • If people knew you wouldn't take revenge, they would take advantage of you • So urge to take revenge is evolved human characteristic |
| Smith and Jones | restaurant venture |
| Opportunistic model | rational |
| Commitment model | irrational; needs to be so to be effective; not subject to cost-benefit analysis |
| Morality based on | hardwired or easily learned emotions; moral outrage, loyalty, guilt, vengefulness, love, compassion, empathy, sympathy |
| Religion | psychological predisposition to absorb and practice favored by natural selection (hard to fake signal of commitment to social group) |
| William James Religion | Rituals Belief in unseen order Belief that highest good consist of bringing one's life into harmony with order |
| Emile Durkheim Religion | unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things that unite into one single moral community all those who adhere to them |
| Sosis | study taht shows that religious communes last 4 times as long as secular ones; religion enhances within group cooperation reinforces basic morality, but also enhances inter-group hostility |
| Human phylogeny | 1. encephalization 2. development of speech, art, morality, religion, ritual 3. formation of larger groups with complex division of labor |
| Group-group competition | cause all trends of human phylogeny; main driving force in human biological evolution; trait favored if it enhanced human ability to form larger, better united social groups |
| Brain power | increased because of evolution of the microscopic structure and wrinkled surface |
| 9 | times as large as our brain is expected to be for a mammal of our size; size for 1000 pound ape |
| Costs of encephalization | 1. longer period of maturation 2. more difficult births 3. much brain growth after birth 4. more helpless infants 5. greater need for nurturance per child |
| Coping with costs of encephalization | 1. biparentalism 2. long-term exclusive male-female bonds |
| Robin Dunbar | social group size and neocortical ratio correlate strongly |
| 150 | suggested group size by neocoritcal ratio this size or smaller can be held together by small talk, gossip, face to face interactions |
| Grooming | replaced by gossip and small talk in humans as means of holding expressing solidarity; more efficient than grooming |
| >150 | Use hard-to-fake signs of commitment to make larger groups; held together by hierarchies and formal rules that entail coercion |
| Germ-warfare model | culture is primarily used to influence other people; tool for achieving human activity, food, security, mates and status |
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